Share via

President Xi Jinping is pursuing a pernicious underground war on intellectual debate and instilling a culture of fear in China’s universities, said an academic sacked for speaking out against the Government.

Dubbed a “crackdown on thought” by university tutors, the campaign comes as activists predict arrests and prison sentences for liberal thinkers over the next two months.

Academics associated with the persecuted New Citizens’ Movement said that efforts to suppress freedom of speech were a symptom of paranoia and vowed that they would fail. “To change this country we just need to be smarter than Xi, and we are,” a